


don't make me wait too long

by broikawa



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Choose Your Own Ending, Gay Richie Tozier, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Movie: IT Chapter Two (2019), POV Second Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Possibly Unrequited Love, Richie Tozier-centric, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broikawa/pseuds/broikawa
Summary: richie tozier is agonizingly in love.or ;; choose-your-own-adventure 2-ending fic because i love pain but also want eddie alive





	1. love

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in a frenzy (also i blame donna tartt for the long sentences and em-dashes and brackets and semicolon use)
> 
> edit: (as of posting this) ending 1 up tomorrow (10/31) and ending 2 up the next day instead !

You love him, but you don’t know it.

You get the call before a show. You’re on in five and your phone rings; you answer it, the voice on the other end is distantly familiar. Your stomach starts twisting for a reason you can’t say and you rush outside to let out your lunch. You’re a mess on stage; you’re full of nerves, you’re shaking, you forget our own damn joke, and you don’t know why. Memories come to you, though not in full pictures; they come like drops out of a leaky faucet or rain falling from roofs after a storm; they’re there but they’re not enough. You can’t place any names or faces or words but you see bikes and arcade machines and a gloved hand and red shorts and a broken arm.  _ Come home, we need you, come back to Derry _ . You drive to the airport reluctantly to go the next day, and you don’t know if you can even call it home at all. Hell, you still can’t even remember it being home in the first place, and when you try to remember, your mind clouds over and you forget what you’re doing. You can’t sit still the whole plane ride. You don’t have an appetite, not since the phone call. You don’t stop after you get there; you want to make this quick, get home – your  _ real _ home – as soon as you can. You go to the restaurant. He’s there.

You love him, and you start to remember.

Dinner is long, but good. Your nerves are still there, unchanged, but you feel better, you feel  _ good _ . It’s good to see them. You catch up like you never left each other; how could you have forgotten them, your friends, your Losers, all of them? There’s one empty seat, the one for your best out of all of them, but you know he’ll be there soon. You’re still on edge, but the alcohol relaxes you soon enough. You’ve drank to forget before and you can do it again, you plan on doing it again, and silently hope there’ll be access to more at your hotel. You look at him, talk to him, tease him, and you know it’s like old times when you were kids even if you can’t remember yet. He plays along as he always has and eventually you’re bickering ( _ flirting? _ you allow yourself to ponder) as if you never stopped and you never want to stop, never again. You hold his hand; it shouldn’t count but it does, it does to you.

The fun is over soon. Everyone’s filled in on the details; why you’re there, what you’re about to do, what’s going to happen. There’s swearing and anger and  _ you could’ve told us sooner _ , and to yourself you think fuck this before saying it out loud. The real horrors begin sooner than they should’ve (though you think they never should’ve happened at all, what did you do to deserve this?) and you’re all scattered to every side of the room. He’s on the other side from you, out of reach, and you wish he wasn’t; you wish he were with you, next to you, so you call his name and you wish you could protect him because if anyone here didn’t deserve this it’s him and you know you would do anything to keep him safe and, even though you know he can take care of himself (because he’s always taken care of himself, from what you remember, he’s always had to), you want to protect him because you care about him. Because you love him?

You leave faster than you came, all of you, and continue the arguments and denial outside. He agrees with you, that this is crazy, all of this is fucking crazy, we can’t do this; it makes you feel a little better. You want nothing more than to go to your hotel room and sleep off this insane nightmare of a reality and get the fuck out of this town. You remember why you hated it so much; the crushing social pressure, the bullying, the insults, the  _ slurs _ spit in your face, your fear eating you from the inside out, the whispers, the rumors, the bathroom graffiti. Your insecurities crawl up your spine and sit on the back of your neck, a weight reminding you of nights spent crying and bandaged wrists and flushed metal and convincing yourself you’re all right. Your eyes are watering but you can’t cry, not yet.

She makes the call after you eat and you wish she hadn’t. You’ll never see your best friend again and you feel even more like shit. It pushes you down even further and you didn’t know you could still feel this much all at once. You desperately want to get to your hotel now and, luckily for you, so does everyone else. When you get there you go upstairs without a second wasted to pack your things back up. He follows. You think about asking him to come with you. You can do that, right? You’ve known each other since childhood but you just saw each other for the first time in years only a few hours ago; shit, you didn’t even remember him before you were called. You nearly run into each other in the hallway.

The rest of the night is more tears, more fear, more fuck this, more more more and it feels neverending. When you finally get to bed (it’s nearing three in the morning) you’re fucking beat; tired from the plane ride and dinner and the information overload and the inevitable battle you’re going to have to face sooner than you can expect.

You love him, and it’s all coming back to you.

You all go to your old hangout the next day. It’s dusty and dirty and covered with cobwebs (he probably hates it, you think to yourself). There’s a moldy piece of fabric in one corner, a hammock. A memory comes back to you; tangled legs and a hand on an ankle and a racing heartbeat and flustered cheeks. You find your friend’s token, a symbol of his sweetness and compassion. You remember he’s gone. The mood’s down again and you leave. Someone suggests splitting up, a bad idea in your (and his; he agrees with you) opinion, but you do anyway because there’s no way you’ll all find your tokens together.

You find yourself later at the old arcade, broken down now but colourful and lively in your childhood. You’ve got a million memories in this place with yourself and your friends and others. One other in particular, that summer, a boy your age; he had been in your math class, the only one that talked to you because no one else was there with you, and you talked a few times over holidays before you asked him to the arcade. You found out later he was Bower’s cousin, and you found out again when he screamed at you, told you to get the fuck out of his town, this place has no room for boys like you. And in some regard, he was right, looking back; you can’t be queer in Derry, it just doesn’t happen. It’s a living hell, at least it was for you, and you’d never even met another gay person until you left. You’d never come to terms with any of it, not completely. As far as you and everyone else is concerned you’re just an unmarried straight 40-year-old man and you plan on keeping it that way. You take a game token from the machine.

Your plan lasts until you go to the park – you went there that day too – and immediately you wish you hadn’t. It had you (yes, It) ever since you’d entered town and it had you now and you wish you could kill the fucking thing right there but you couldn’t.  _ You’re gay, Tozier, that’s all you are, you’re a fucking queer, of course no one likes you, no one likes the gay kid, no one wants to be  _ friends _ with the gay kid, that’s all you’ll ever be. _ You close your eyes. It can’t get you if you don’t believe, if you can’t see it. It’s not real and you tell yourself this over and over and it almost works but then it doesn’t and you’re running. The only way you could really stop being afraid is if you got over the thing you were afraid of so you try, you try so fucking hard, and you think of anything you can to stop It from killing you right then and there. It can’t get you anymore, it shouldn’t be able to. Things have changed, it’s not the same as it was back then. I could get married if I wanted to. I could hold a man’s hand on the street if I wanted to; fuck, I could hold  _ Eddie’s _ if he let me. It’s over now and you’re safe and you’re thinking about him as you drive back with your token and you decide you need to do something before it’s too late.

You love him, and you finally realize you do.

You stop at the crappy jewelers near your hotel and get two bands, one for him and one for you. You don’t even know if he’d take it or even if he loves you back but you buy them anyway, not even worrying about the price because you would spend every dollar in the world if it meant making him happy. You keep them in your pocket at first, but nerves get to you, find their way to your stomach, twisting it into knots, and so you put them in your suitcase for now. You’ll take them out once this is all over, you tell yourself. You can’t lose him again.

You’ve gone through hell and back and back again in the last two days and it doesn’t ever stop. You’ve seen Bowers twice now and luckily you’ll never see him again. Because he’s dead. Because you killed him. When he everyone gets to the library you see he’s been hurt and your heart sinks the second you see his bandaged cheek and you wish you could do something to make it better. He’s quiet and shaken up, as expected, and you soon miss his bickering and witty comments and eye rolls and  _ shut up, Richie _ s even though it’s been a mere few hours. You can tell spirits are down. You’ve lost track of time and soon enough you find yourself on Neibolt street at the fucking house and you realize that this could be it; you could walk in there and never come out, none of you. You could die never telling him how you feel or, worse, he could die before you get the chance and the thought of that haunts you because he’s been your past and now he’s your present and,  _ God _ , you would go to the ends of the earth for this man to be your future because you’re in love with him, dammit, you’ve always been in love with him and you’re never going to stop. You need to tell him. You need to.

You love him, and he needs to know.


	2. loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you got: bad ending

You love him, and you lost him.

He isn’t gone in an instant like it happens in the movies. You’ve all been fighting for a while. You got caught at one point. When you wake up he tells you that he got it and you won but you learn just as quick that you haven’t. He leaves you slowly, like the blood does from his abdomen where he’s been compromised, and you sit with him through nearly the entire thing. Nearly. You talk about nothing, like nothing is happening around you, like he isn’t bleeding, like you don’t want to cry and scream and protest that this isn’t fair, he shouldn’t have to die, it should’ve been you, why couldn’t it have been you? Your chest feels like his must and your heart is aching and you feel every bit of sadness you’ve ever felt all at once and look at him. You look at him and the tired eyes and the lips you never kissed and tell him to hold on, it’ll be okay, you’ll be fine, we’ll get you out of here I promise. Your friends need help and you’re tired and pissed off and full of rage and you need to finish this before you can really help him so you get up, ready to get this shit over with. You do, eventually. The battle’s over, you’ve won, you’re all okay. Is he okay?

You remember him, on the ground, bleeding out, and you run faster than you’ve run in your entire life to the man you’ve loved your entire life and you sit back down next to him and say his name softly and wait for his response to come but it never does. You say it again, hoping it’ll do something, hoping he’ll talk or move or breathe but he doesn’t because he’s gone and you can’t believe it, you don’t want to believe it, you can barely even think about it. Everything around you is crashing down both literally and mentally, he’s gone, fuck, it should’ve been me, and your friends grab your arms to drag you out but you can’t leave, not without him, we can’t leave him here, guys, he’s okay, we just need to get him out of here, and you scream as you’re dragged away from him, farther and farther and farther. You can’t believe he’s gone, you can’t believe you’re leaving him, you can’t believe your friends are letting him stay down here because dammit they were his friends too why don’t they care, they should care, shouldn’t they? You scream his name in the small chance he can hear you and your throat is burning but you don’t care because you love him and you never got to say it – he died not knowing how much you loved him, how much you cared for him, and you never got to tell him and you never will. You know you’ll regret it until you die and, God, you want nothing more than to die in this moment because why couldn’t they have left you down there too, left you with him to die at his side, a lovers’ tragedy, the way you should’ve. You never got to give him the band, you were going to once you got out, and you were going to get out, you were sure of it because he’s the strongest and bravest man you’ve ever known even if he doesn’t look it and even if he doesn’t know it or believe it himself, but you know it and you believe it because you’ve seen him fight and you know what he can do and now he’s gone, just like that. You get out and you think it can’t be any worse but the house crashes down like your entire world and you want to dive into the ruins and find him and pull him out and fucking save him but you can’t because he’s gone and you’re not getting him back.

You say nothing until you’re in the water. Your friends are happy, smiling, laughing, joking, we won, we did it, we can celebrate. You stand there, water up to your chest, and watch. You take off your glasses; they’re cracked, broken beyond repair, and there’s blood on the lenses. You know it’s his blood. It’s the last thing you have of him, the last part of him you’ll ever touch, and you know it. You can’t hold it in anymore, it’s all too much, you let go and cry. First you lost your best friend and then you lost the one man you loved, the one man you let yourself love, and you don’t know if you can come back from it or if you ever will. You let go completely because fuck, fuck this, fuck all of this, fuck this town, fuck everyone who’s ever made him feel insecure about himself, fuck the fucking clown, fuck everything, because holy fucking shit he’s gone and you’re never fucking getting him back. Your friends notice; how can they not, when you’re crying so loud, sobs coming out from your throat. It burns even more than it did when you were screaming his name. They go silent, crowding around you, a circle of support. You never told them either but you don’t have to because they know and you know they know and you figure they’ve always known because you were all so close, both then and now, and you feel a spark of love from each of them.

Later before you leave you drive to the bridge. You get out of your car and walk along the fence before you get to what you’re looking for; a carving, an old one, from when you were 13; your initial and his, your love forever immortalized in the wood. You take out your pocket knife and retrace it until it’s deep and you kneel there and stare at it. You feel so numb and yet you feel so much and you wish he was here with you to see it. You wonder if he ever saw it. You get in your car again and almost leave town before you remember the thing in your suitcase, the bands, and you turn onto a different street. You come to the lot where the house once stood. Opening the trunk, you get your suitcase, digging out the bands from where you put them. Both of them in hand you walk to the settled ruins where the steps used to be and kneel down. You say his name like he’s there with you, you say hello. You apologize, say you’re sorry, tell him you wanted to say something sooner. You make a hole in the dirt at your feet and kiss the ring before putting burying it in the ground. You tell him you love him. You wonder what could’ve happened if you had said something sooner, you wonder what you could’ve had.

You love him, and he’ll never know.

**Author's Note:**

> me, sobbing: i just *clenches fist* love richie tozier so much
> 
> tumblrs:  
etherealparrish (main)  
ohmyhoneybun (lovecore/mlm)  
adriendoesthings (studyblr/langblr/bookblr)  
witchcraftparrish (witchblr)  
historicalsgnificance (dark academia)  
(WIP!!!) adrienwritesthings (writeblr)


End file.
